


the lone lighthouse [at the ends of the seven seas]

by shipwreckinabottle



Category: Aquaman (2018)
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, Kinda AU, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-09-22 10:59:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17058536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipwreckinabottle/pseuds/shipwreckinabottle
Summary: “What lies beyond the Seven Seas, father?” asked Mera, eyes full of wonder, curious and wise beyond her own seven years."Nothing, my little pearl," answered King Nereus. "Nothing lies beyond the Seven Seas but the ends of our world; an endless abyss, far deeper than the trench, and darker than even our eyes can behold.”/AU/ : in which Arthur is the keeper of the lighthouse at the ends of the Seven Seas.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Somewhat of an AU story, inspired by Tom and Atlanna's story, in which Arthur is a lighthouse keeper of sorts, and Mera the princess who seeks his help.
> 
> Not beta-ed, let me know if there are any mistakes.

“What lies beyond the Seven Seas, father?” asked Mera, eyes full of wonder, curious and wise beyond her own seven years. She sat on the edge of her coral-bed, legs hanging over the side, studying an old parchment map, red hair cresting in the ocean’s gentle pull.

“Where did you find the map, little one?” asked her father, King Nereus of Xebel.

“In the old archives, father. We learn of the Seven Seas in class, but there are tales and mentions of the eighth in the old texts, why?”

King Nereus left his seat and drifted next to his daughter, “Because, my little pearl, there lies nothing beyond our Seven Seas but the ends of our world; an endless abyss, far deeper than the trench, and darker than even our eyes can behold.”

“An endless abyss…” Mera whispered. “But why is it no longer on our maps?”

King Nereus waved his arm, and the waters before them separated into the continental regions of the Seven Seas. “The seven charted seas, even the unmapped trench, belongs to us Atlanteans. We rule the Seven Seas, but the eighth, long lost to us, has no master.”

Holding onto Mera’s hands, he traced her fingers across the old map, from Xebel all the way to where the eighth was mapped. “In the tales of old, long before King Atlan’s rule, it was said that it was Poseidon himself who came from the heavens and separated the eighth ocean from our seventh, keeping _those_ from the abyss beyond forever banished to their realm in the Eighth Sea.” 

Mera’s eyes grew wide, “He… separated the oceans?”

Her father nodded, “A feat so powerful, so draining, Poseidon was said to have slept for a thousand years after.”

“Does that mean we’re now safe from the abyss? From the… things beyond?”

“I believe so,” King Nereus smiled kindly. “Because, if the legends were to be true, only Poseidon himself knows of the path to the forgotten Eighth Sea. And even if the gods themselves were to forsake us, the lighthouse still protects us from the abyss beyond.”

“The lighthouse?”

“It was also said that before Poseidon’s thousand-year slumber, he tasked a noble line of Atlantean greats to the guarding of the abyss. Poseidon gave them the power of the gods, the very strength to repel the darkness of the abyss, but in turn, they were forever bound to the lighthouse, their very existence their duty to protect the oceans from the great darkness beyond.”

Mera was quiet for a long while, deep in thought. “Bound to a lighthouse at the ends of our ocean…” she eventually said. “Sounds lonely.”

Her father shrugged. “That is if the legends were to be true. But at the end of the day, stories are just stories, passed down a thousand generations from fathers to their next. No one has seen or has encountered the abyss for as long as our ancestors have ruled, and thus… the stories are just… stories of the old, nothing more.”

 

* * *

 

“The lighthouse is just an old legend, Mera,” laughed Topo, her childhood friend. “It’s nothing more than an old children’s tale, made to scare us from venturing too far beyond the claims of our sea, lest we cause an international incident between kingdoms and their strict trespassing laws. Especially those of the Brine, you know how petty they all are.”  

Miles close to the edge of Xebel’s territorial lines, seventeen-year-old Mera hovered above an sunken pillar, waiting for a school of brightly colored fishes to pass before parting a reef of coral, revealing the carved passages of ancient Atlantean text below.

“I know,” she shrugged. “But, as archaeologists-”

“Archaeologist- _in-training_ ,” her friend corrected her.

“Archaeologists- _in-training_ ,” Mera rolled her eyes. “Our job is not to dismiss, but verify, to find the stories of yesterdays and inspire the children of tomorrow.”

“As inspiring and as textbook as ever,” grinned Topo. “You’d make a great queen or a professor someday, Princess Mera.”

“Preferably the latter, old friend,” Mera smiled as she copied down the ancient text. “Romance isn’t really onto the horizon for me right now. Archaeology on the other hand, is all that I need.”

 

* * *

 

On the day of Mera’s graduation, all of Xebel was in attendance.

And most unexpectedly, so was the crowned prince of Atlantis himself.

Mera’s female classmates giggled and sighed as Prince Orm rode in proud atop his giant white shark and greeted her father with a firm clasp of their hands.

When the graduation ceremony commenced, Mera could see the two of them exchanging words, and though she couldn’t make them out from where she sat, there was an unmistakeable look of solemnness in her father’s face, a look she didn’t quite—at that time—understand.

The prince left halfway through the ceremony, likely already concluding his business with her father, and when Mera stepped onto the podium to receive her graduating pearls, all that she saw in her father’s eyes was joy, as if that second of sadness was nothing more than a figment of her imagination, the remnants of an old passing current no longer there.

 

* * *

 

In all her twenty years, there was nothing Mera wanted more than to map the ocean’s depths, to seek the ancient worlds of her elders, and to discover the wonders of the Gods long before the _fall_.

But on the night of her graduation, as she learned of her betrothment to the crowned prince of Atlantis, her dreams of archaeology and adventure quickly came to an end before it even began.

“You belong on the throne, my little pearl,” her father had tried to sooth her as she cried the whole night in his arms. “Not digging in the dirt for old fools’ tales.”

She knew he wasn’t ridiculing her dreams; her father knew how much it’d all meant to her.

But she also knew of her duty—as a daughter of Xebel, there were sacrifices she had to make for the betterment of her kingdom, for her people.

One of such sacrifice—her dreams.

She had long prepared herself for it.

But it still hurt, a lot.

 

* * *

 

It was at least another year since Mera last thought of the lighthouse at the ends of her world.

As the days to her union with the crowned prince of Atlantis came ever closer, she visited her childhood home, finding the old map hidden deep between her old coral-bed.

She traced her fingers along the lines of the Eighth Sea, as her father did all those years ago, and memories of a happier time emerged like bright bubbles in a dark sea devoid of light.

But Mera’s happiness was short-lived.

Rapid pounding came from outside the room.

Nuidis Vulko, the Atlantean advisor and a long-time friend of her father entered. “Your Highness,” he bowed. “I’m afraid I have dire news”

“What of?” Mera asked.

“There has been an attack. Your father… he…”

 

* * *

 

In the ocean, Mera could never tell if she were crying. But there were times when she could feel it; a painful throb deep within her chest, as if her heart was being crushed over and over again by the pressures deep below the ocean floors.

Her father lived, but barely. She sat beside his bed, clutching onto his pale hands, praying to Poseidon or whichever gods that might be listening.

None answered her prayers.

On the third day, someone stormed into the room and woke her from her rest.

It was Orm, her betrothed.

“The surface world… if it is war they seek, then so be it!” he snarled, face contorting into one of anger, of rage. Mera could see the visible menace in his eyes, burning as brightly as the bubbling lava from the ring of fire itself. “I promise I will kill them for hurting your father, I will kill them all!”

Somehow, his promise did not make her feel better.

Not one bit.

 

* * *

 

“You’ve done your job well, surface-dweller, even better than I’d expected,” Orm spoke into the transmission device. “You’ll be paid handsomely in Atlantean gold.”

The man nodded. “Is there anything else?”

“Dispose of the sub you used for the attack, and all is done.”

The transmission beeped to a close.

Something clanged behind Orm. He spun towards the sound, trident in hand.

But there was nothing there.

He swam towards the noise, and something caught his eye.

Stuck between the vents pumping fresh sea-water in and out of his chambers, was a tiny little pearl.

A Xebel graduation pearl.

He growled in anger.

_Mera._

 

* * *

 

“It was him, it was him all along!” Mera stormed into Xebel’s command room. “The attack, my father’s injuries, Orm planned it all!”

Keronn, one of her father’s most trusted war generals, remained as quiet and as stoic as ever. “Calm down, Your Highness,” he looked up from the war charts. “I believe there is a perfectly reasonable explanation as to-”

“No, Keronn! I saw him! I saw him talking to the surface-dweller, I heard their plans! He…” her words faltered as realization struck her. “You… You weren’t there with father on the day of the attack. Y-You were with Orm! You must know of the attack! The two of you are working together? But you are of Xebel! Why?-”

An energized beam flashed past Mera. In her surprise, it took a second for the pain to register. Then it did, fire searing through her side, blood turning the water around her red.

And as the general started to reload his weapon, Mera’s eyes turned as blue as the water around her.

“You hurt my father!” she screamed, and she roared, and as the waters around her rose with her anger, her frustration, the general was crushed to a complete pulp.

 

* * *

 

Mera had never felt more alone. She had no allies in the Atlantean kingdom, and she knew not longer of who to trust in her own.

She limped to the docks, blood seeping through the thin seaweed strapped to her side. The wound would have to be tended to later, but as of now, her first and only priority was to escape, to seek refuge far from Orm’s reach.

The alarms started to blare when she stepped through customs—her diplomatic pass must have already been revoked—which meant that they were coming after her.

The guards left their towers and surrounded her. “Stand down, Princess of Xebel!” one of them shouted. “Stand down or we’ll be forced to open fire!”

There were at least six of them between Mera and her ship—the _Kingfisher_ —a graduation gift from her father.

Her father, who because of Orm’s hunger for war, now still hung desperately onto life.

The water around Mera started to swirl.

But before she could make her next move, someone landed behind the guards, his trident a blur, creating a powerful current which tore through the guards like a bloodthirsty shark, sending them spiralling over the side and into the depths below.

It was Vulko.

“Are you here to stop me?” Mera asked.

The elderly advisor shook his head. “No, Your Highness, I’m here to help you escape.”

“Why?”

“A promise to your father.”

Without elaborating, Vulko accessed the security panels and released the docking clamps to the _Kingfisher_. “I’ve temporarily disabled the Hydro-cannons. You have to go, now, before reinforcements arrive, or it’ll be too late.”

“B-But where can I go?” there was defeat in Mera’s voice. “Even Xebel stands behind Orm now.”

Vulko nodded. “The kingdoms are starting to unite behind Orm because of the attack on your father. Soon, there will be nowhere safe, nowhere left to hide. But…”

Mera’s heart swelled with hope, “But?”

“The Eighth Sea.”

Her heart sank as quickly as it rose, “The Eighth Sea is nothing but a myth…”

“Or so we’ve thought, until the discovery of something that might lead us there,” he removed an ancient contraption from his bag and pressed it into Mera’s hands. It felt older than even Atlantis itself. “Our archaeologists are stumped, but if anyone can solve the ancients’ riddles, it is you, young princess.”

As Mera boarded the ship, she looked at Vulko a final time. “Will you be okay?” she asked. “If they were to catch you helping me…”

“I’ll be fine, I have someone erasing the security tapes as we speak,” Vulko winked. “Take care now, Your Highness. Your journey will be a dangerous one, full of treachery and uncertainty.”

And so, the _Kingfisher_ was on its way, with no safe harbour in all the Seven Seas.

 

* * *

 

Even the darkness from the oceans beyond could not supress the lighthouse’s glow.

The rocks beneath her feet were rough, and the air in her lungs brought great discomfort, but even with her heavy heart, Mera felt a great sense of achievement.

The lighthouse was real, and she was finally here.

She barely managed a step onto shore before falling into sand, her wounds from multiple encounters with Orm’s forces in the previous week finally catching up to her.

Darkness danced at the edges of her vision, she couldn’t even remember the last time she slept.

But, as she drifted away, she was aware of an approaching form, then large hands, gentler then she imagined, picking her up—and she was floating away, like a stray jellyfish lost to the ocean’s pull.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not beta-ed, let me know if there are any mistakes :]
> 
> Thoughts at the end of the chapter.

_The Men-Of-War, highly trained Atlantean soldiers loyal only to Orm, were relentless in their pursuit, chasing her to the ends of the Seven Seas._

_In the first week, they sought to capture her._

_In the second, they switched from electrical nets and spiked harpoons to energized cannons and blades._

_On the third, they ended up beside her in an ancient cave far beyond the ocean’s floor, the entire group of them—Mera included, bound by the massive tentacles of a primordial sea beast, a mythical creature of the deep, not seen since the earliest days of Atlantean mythology._

_The sea beast was an unusual creature, a chimera with the body of a sea serpent, the head of a megalodon, scales of a giant sea scorpion, and with hundreds of protruding tentacles that rivalled even the largest of colossal squids._

_And the strangest part of it—was that it spoke._

_“Children of Atlantis…”_

_In a voice devoid of gender, the beast spoke not with its mouth—full of teeth as massive as the spiralling towers of Xebel—but as a voice in their heads, a voice unusually soft and almost whimsical._

_But whimsical, the beast was not._

_It crushed the first group of soldiers that activated their weapons, and when the tentacles uncoiled, all that remained were blots of flesh and blood, sinking slowly to the unseen depths below._

_“I have not had visitors… in a very… very long time.”_

_Mera could hear the beast’s voice in her head, as clear as spring water and, from the reactions of the soldiers beside her, so could they._

_Not telepathy, she realized, but echolocation of some kind._

_There came no menace in the beast’s voice, even after the way it’d killed most of Orm’s loyal men._

_Not menace, but amusement._

_“Is it… passage… you seek?”_

_Mera’s breath caught in her throat._

_The ancient contraption had led her here, and if she was right…_

_“One of you do,” the beast’s voice rang true in her head, and Mera was left wondering if the creature could hear her very thoughts. “Interestin-”_

_“Monster!” one of the two remaining soldiers suddenly shouted. “Unhand us this instance! We-”_

_The tentacles constricted._

_And then all that remained was Mera and the final soldier, who seemed smart enough to keep his mouth shut and weapons undrawn._

_“Now, now, if we are done… with the interruptions…” the beast said in a sing-song voice. “And if it is passage… you seek… then answer my riddle, children of… Atlantis._

_Tell me of a creature borne with a bawl, becomes four-footed, two-footed, then none at all.”_

_“-What?!” the soldier blurted. “You’re holding our lives over a game!?”_

_“Not… a game,” the beast replied, and Mera too could hear it in her head. “For… passage.”_

_“Passage for what!?”_

_The beast turned to Mera, and it was she who responded, voice shaky with confirmation, “The entrance to the Eighth Sea.”_

 

* * *

 

_It was more than five hours since the riddle was given, and neither had yet to offer the beast an answer._

_Another five passed before the soldier did._

_“A shark!” he yelled._

_From the beast came an amused, “Hmm?”_

_“A shark brawls with its prey, it grows in length from two feet to four. And when it… umm… it dies, there’s none at all! It’s a shark!”_

_The cavern fell quiet for a moment._

_But the voice in Mera’s head was deafening._

_“Wrong.”_

_The tentacles constricted, and while Mera looked away, there was no avoiding the mists of red which soon drifted across her._

 

* * *

 

_It was almost a day later when Mera spoke._

_“The answer you seek is, ‘Man’.”_

_There came another amused, “Hmm?”_

_“Man—who bawls as he leaves his mother’s womb, who crawls on four as a baby, walks on two as an adult and, as Atlanteans—swim with none.”_

_Movement came from the tentacles sliding around her._

_Mera squeezed her eyes shut, prepared for the worst._

_But the worst never came._

_Tension seeped, and she was released from the creature’s grasp._

_“How very… interesting,” was the last thing Mera heard from the beast as it retreated back into the darkened crevices._

_Soon, Mera was left alone once more with only her pounding heart, floating in a quiet little cavern, as if her encounter with the mythical creature of old was nothing more than another old fool’s tale, lost to time._

 

* * *

 

When Mera came to, coughing, spluttering, and choking on pure, unfiltered air, it took her around a few long, painful seconds to remember how to breathe.

While she’d never intended, nor ever been to the surface before, those pure of royal blood were born with the innate ability to breathe both on land and in sea, and as the princess of Xebel, Mera understood how—at least in theory—and her body did the rest.

Like a surface mammal, she inhaled, exhaled, then inhaled again. A few more deep gulps, and sweet air filled her lungs. A foreign sensation; surface-breathing, she soon realized, was nothing at all like she’d always imagined.

The feeling was different, of course; oxygen on the surface—unlike its underwater counterpart, due to the nature of air molecules, carried both taste and smell. Underwater-breathing was dull and tasteless, but up on the surface, Mera felt as if she could taste the air itself, and while she fully understood the negative connotations of a “surface-breather”, she couldn’t deny the simple pleasures from breathing pure oxygenated air, a feeling not at all revolting as she’d always thought.

As Mera continued to breathe in naturally, trying to become a little more accustomed to the act and no longer like a fish gasping out of water, she became gradually more aware of the unfamiliarity around her.

Not just in her surroundings—the strange room she was in, but the _feeling_ of it all; gone was the familiar embrace of the ocean, the familiar touch of ocean currents beneath her fingertips. Everything she’d once held dear had disappeared, and all that remained in their place was—nothingness, a cold emptiness where warmth once was.

She shuddered, longing for the ocean, even with all its dangers within.

When she finally found the strength to sit upright, the first thing Mera then noticed was than all of her wounds had already been attended to. Pieces of cloth, resembling parchment, were plastered all across her injuries. A tight fit, sturdy, but not too suffocating. They reminded her of underwater seaweed-treatment, which she assumed was applied the same in theory, just in a _surface_ sort of way.

It made her wonder where she was and who she was with, and Mera fully intended on finding out.

It was strange, and something of a struggle getting up to her feet.

Everything around her felt heavier and clunkier without the ocean’s touch, and Mera only managed half a step forward before stumbling, grabbing onto and catching herself on the cabinet-like furniture beside her. She took another long second’s pause, allowing her body to continue adapting to her surroundings, like how she would in lower pressure, as her eyes too took heed.

She seemed to be in a small bedroom of sorts, not drained below water, but above. The few pieces of furniture around her were made not of marble nor coral, but instead wood, a most unusual choice to Atlantean standards. But the more Mera thought about it, the more it made sense—after all, without rot, wood could last a lot longer above water than it’d do below.

Resting her shaky knees for a second, Mera sat down on the bed again, and as she did, it was only then she realized how soft the fabric beneath her was. The discovery astounded her. She ran her fingers across the soft sheets, marvelling at its bewildering texture, half tempted to rub her face against the fabric right there. It was unlike anything she’d felt deep in the ocean, where nothing was as soft and everything was just… _wet_.

Then something most peculiar caught her eye, pulling her attention away from the fabric.

There was something green on the drawer next to the bed, an object half embedded in a ceramic pot filled with soil. It was unfamiliar, but Mera recognized parts of it: the stems, the roots, and the leaves.

It was a plant, one which grew on land, not unlike the seaweeds and corals of her world, but different nonetheless.

She stared at it for a long second, nibbling on her lower lip—then plucked off one of its leaves and bit down on it.

She munched on it for a moment, then immediately spat it out in disgust.

It tasted nothing like a plant.

It tasted like… plastic.

And upon further inspection, the “plant” turned out to be exactly what it tasted like—plastic.

It wasn’t real.

It was a fake, plastic plant.

The thought of it horrified Mera to no ends. It made her think of the plastic waste that polluted the seas, that harmed the countless sea creatures of her world.

_Was this bait for an unsuspecting sea creature?_

The image of a poor sea turtle choking on the plastic plant almost caused her to gag.

_What sort of vileness could someone possibly want with a fake plant!?_

She glared at the _sham_ , her gaze fiery. She wanted to pick up the pot and send it flying across the room.

But much like the wooden furniture around her, the more she thought about it (and the more her anger subsided), the more rational thoughts began to take hold.

She told herself that things were viewed, and worked differently up on the surface, and from the _sham’s_ posture in the room, the object seemed almost more… decorative than it was for vile purposes.

 _How strange_.

Like most of the surface world, she simply did not understand it, and it made her even more so curious as to where she currently was.

The last thing she remembered before falling unconscious was seeing the lighthouse before her in all its blinding glory.

But the lighthouse was supposed to be guarded by Atlantean greats, which meant that while its main section was built above water, she still imagined its interior to be fully flooded, a feat easily achieved with Atlantean engineering.

Yet the building she was in—looked more like the dwellings of a surface-dweller, and not the sacred halls of an ancient wonder, the fabled lighthouse of old.

Though, if she had to pick, would still beat the alternative of waking up in Orm’s prison.

But still, she had questions, so many questions.

There was a door which led out of the bedroom, but Mera chose to avoid it for now. She didn’t know what was waiting for her outside. She didn’t know if she was in the company of friends or foe. She needed more information as to her whereabouts before making her next move.

Approaching the windows instead, she drew apart the blinds—and immediately jumped backwards, yelping in surprise as warm sunlight grazed the flesh of her arm.

It took Mera a second to realize she wasn’t in immediate danger, and another to remember how to surface-breathe.

When her heart finally stopped beating like an Atlantean war drum on the eve of battle, she approached the window once more, slower this time round, uncharacteristically timid, and reached out with shaky hands, uncertain into the light’s reach.

Her fingers were engulfed in warmth, like dipping them into the pools of an underwater spring connected to the Earth’s core.

Mera tried, but couldn’t help the smile that tugged onto the edges of her lips. Growing up, she’d always heard stories of the surface’s _sun_ light, of how—if swam too closely to the surface—could crack Atlantean skin, could blind their eyes to the ocean’s depth.

She never believed those stories. She’d always loved the lights of the sun, the rays of warmth that filtered deep into the ocean’s depths like a beautiful current, visible to the eye, and pleasant to the touch. She could never believe how something so beautiful could cause harm, and now, as the light rolled across her fingertips, bringing nothing but warmth, she couldn’t contain the joy from knowing that she was right all along.

 

* * *

 

Mera looked around the room for anything that could be used as a makeshift weapon, eventually deciding on the wooden bedside lamp. She unplugged it, wielded it and, finally gathering enough courage, stormed out of the bedroom, makeshift weapon cocked back, ready to swing at any perceived threat waiting outside.

There was no one there.

She was alone, in a modest living room of sorts; some of the furniture she recognized, some were familiar in different ways, and some so foreign she couldn’t even begin to fathom what they could possibly be intended for.

Either way, from the domesticity around her, it proved her earlier suspicions to be true—she wasn’t in the lighthouse of old, but in someone else’s home.

There was a shelf full of fishing equipment to the side, most of which seemed almost medieval upon further inspection: wooden fishing spears, rods, hooks, men made tools, not powered by technology of any sort. On the other side of the room where the kitchen was, were half a dozen pots, hanging from the ceiling filled with plants of all colors. Those, she could tell from their scent, were at least real.

Mera stood there for a few long minutes, not quite sure of what to do. She considered taking a seat on the couch and waiting for whoever that owned the place to return, but without knowing the circumstances, it could take hours, maybe even days.

And more importantly, her curiosity could not wait. 

She headed to the front door and tested the knob. It wasn’t locked. A good sign. It meant that she wasn’t a prisoner.

Gathering a deep breath, the action of it almost natural now, she turned the knob and stepped outside.

Warm sunlight weaved across the primrose sand, which shifted underneath her bare feet with each step, as the lullaby of ocean waves greeted her like an old friend lost to the night’s tide.

She was on the ocean’s coast.

The open seas before her glistened like fading embers in the evening’s touch, waves overlapping, sending bubbling foams into the shoreline just meters away, spraying the air with salt and familiarity.

_So familiar, yet so different._

It was her first time seeing this part of the world from the other side, above and not below, like through the opposite end of a two-way mirror not meant for her to be.

Beautiful, more so than she could put into words.

Then she turned around, and her breath snagged in her throat.

It wasn’t the divine view of the ocean beyond that left her most speechless.

It was the building she’d just left from.

A lone, white tower, built upon great rocks made coarse by weather and time; it stood tall on the rocky shores, watching over the quiet seas, stark against the pale, orange skies.

The _Lighthouse_.

A long moment passed before Mera’s shock subsided. She recognized similarities to the ancient drawings in the old scripture, but seeing such a sight up close… she truly had no words.

Then, from behind her, came the sounds of sand crunching beneath feet.

 

* * *

 

Still holding onto the lamp, Mera raised it over her head in a sort of defensive stance as she turned towards the approaching stranger.

It was a man.

A large, muscular surface-dweller, at least a full head taller than she was, and with wild hair that reminded her of the tentacles of an untamed lion mane’s jellyfish.

Large nets hung over his shoulders, fishing rods swung over his back, and he held a container full of fresh fish in his arms, recently caught.

One of the first things Mera noticed—was the man’s arms, kissed by the sun, ran full of dark, blackened lines, symbols and shapes she did not recognize, not of any Atlantean tribe she knew.

The man paused for a second as he noticed her, an eyebrow twitching towards the lamp she held above her head.

Mera remained frozen, staring at him, unsure of what to do.

But he, on the other hand, after recovering from the second’s pause, seemed completely at ease.

“You’re awake,” he said, voice deep and raw, unmuffled by the ocean’s depths.

Then, ignoring the lamp, or perhaps perceiving her as no more of a threat than a small fish, stepped right past her and into the building.

Deciding that he meant her no harm, at that point at least, Mera followed him back in, waiting for him to finish storing his fishing equipment before asking, “Are you the one who found me by the shore?”

He grunted.

“You have my thanks, surface-dweller,” she spoke with utmost seriousness. “My name is Y’Mera Xebelle Challa, Princess of-”

“You’re from Atlantis,” he interrupted.

“Yes,” she nodded, surprised by his answer. “How did you-?”

“Your stench.”

Mera blinked, the air of seriousness crumbling away. “E-Excuse me?”

“Atlanteans all smell alike,” the man said in a matter-of-factly way. And as if to prove his point, he took a piece of fish from the container and waggled it for a bit. “Fishy.”

“W-What!? I… I do not smell like fish!” Mera argued. “And it is impolite to withhold your name while granted mine.”

“It’s Arthur.”

“Arthur…?”

“Just Arthur.” 

“Okay, _Just_ Arthur of… where ever this is,” Mera placed her hands on her hips. “I’ve got a few questions and I’m going to need answers.”

“No can do, Y’Mala Xabubu Chilli,” said Arthur as he stored the fish and threw a jacket over his shoulders. “Night’s falling, I’ve got to keep the lights on.”

Clearly ignoring her very obvious frown, he left the building and headed up the spiralling stairs.

She chased after him, “It’s Y’Mera Xebelle Challa!”

“Y’Mela Xeballa Chulla?” he paused and looked back towards her.

“It’s… nevermind,” she shook her head. “Call me Mera.”

“Alright then, Mera of Atlantis it is!” he chuckled as they reached the highest floor of the building.

The level was spacious, but there was little here save a box at its center, full of gears and machinery, mirrors on each side.

Mera had an inkling of what it might be. She’d heard stories of such boxes in the past, but it was only when Arthur lifted the box, allowing the radiance of the magma stones within to reflect off the mirror and illuminate the dark seas beyond, that it became clear to her as to who he was.

She couldn’t believe her eyes.

_The lighthouse keeper._

_Him!?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a FUN chapter to write. 
> 
> The sea beast guarding the passage to the eighth sea is definitely inspired by "The Sphinx and her riddle," and the riddle itself adapted into a more "underwater-ish" riddle for the story. 
> 
> Mera's POV in exploring / discovering / experiencing the surface world for the first time, especially with her misconceptions and prejudices is something that I'm going to explore a ton in the story. (Arthur too, but in a different way.) 
> 
> Arthur's somewhat introduced in this chapter, but of course, there's not much of a conversation yet. We'll have a ton of that in the next chapter. 
> 
> Hope y'all enjoy! And feel free to leave me your thoughts :]


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